Steve Jobs : Great idea doesn't always translates into great product

19955:49English

Transcript

Machine transcript in the original language. It may contain errors. Select a timestamp to play that moment.

One of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Scully got a very serious disease.
And that disease, I've seen other people get it too.
It's the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work.
And that if you just tell all these other people, you know, here's this great idea, then of course they can go off and make it happen.
And the problem with that is that there's just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship
in between a great idea and a great product.
And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows.
It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the
subtleties of it.
And you also find there's tremendous trade-offs that you have to make.
I mean, you know, there are just certain things you can't make electrons do.
There are certain things you can't make plastic do or glass do or factories do or
robots do.
And as you get into all these things, designing a product is keeping 5,000 things in your
brain, these concepts, and fitting them all together and kind of continuing to push
to fit them together in new and different ways to get what you want.
And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity
to fit these things together a little differently.
And it's that process that is the magic.
And so we had a lot of great ideas when we started, but what I've always felt that
a team of people doing something they really believe in is like when I was a young kid,
There was a widowed man that lived up the street.
And he was in his 80s.
He's a little scary looking.
And I got to know him a little bit.
I think he might have paid me to mow his lawn or something.
And one day he said, come on into my garage.
I want to show you something.
And he pulled out this dusty old rock tumbler.
It was a motor and a coffee can and a little band between them.
And he said, come on with me.
We went out to the back and we got some just some rocks some regular old ugly rocks
and we put them in the can with a little bit of
liquid and a little bit of
grit powder and
We closed the can up and he turned this motor on he said come back tomorrow
And his can was making a you know racket as the stones were
And I came back the next day
And we took we opened the can
and we took out these amazingly beautiful polished rocks.
The same common stones that had gone in
through rubbing against each other like this,
creating a little bit of friction,
creating a little bit of noise,
had come out these beautiful polished rocks.
And that's always been in my mind my metaphor
for a team working really hard on something
they're passionate about is that it's through
a team through that group of incredibly talented people
bumping up against each other, having arguments,
having fights sometimes, making some noise,
and working together, they polish each other,
and they polish the ideas, and what comes out
are these really beautiful stones.
So it's hard to explain,
and it's certainly not the result of one person.
I mean, people like symbols, so I'm the symbol
certain things, but it really was a team effort on the Mac.
Now, in my life, I observed something fairly early on at Apple, which I didn't know how
to explain it then, but I've thought a lot about it since.
Most things in life, the dynamic range between average and the best is at most two to one.
If you go to New York City and you get an average taxi cab driver versus the best taxi cab driver,
you're probably going to get to your destination with the best taxi cab maybe 30% faster.
In an automobile, what's the difference between an average and the best?
Maybe 20%?
The best CD player and an average CD player?
I don't know, 20%?
So 2 to 1 is a big, big dynamic range in most of life.
In software, and it used to be the case in hardware too, the difference between average and the best is 50 to 1, maybe 100 to 1.
Easy.
Okay?
Very few things in life are like this, but what I was lucky enough to spend my life in is like this.
And so I've built...
a lot of my success off finding these truly gifted people and not settling for B and
C players, but really going for the A players.
And I found something.
I found that when you get enough A players together, when you go through the incredible
work to find five of these A players, they really like working with each other because
they've never had a chance to do that before.
And they don't want to work with B and C players, and so it becomes self-policing.
And they only want to hire more A players.
And so you build up these pockets of A players, and it propagates.
And that's what the Mac team was like.
They were all A players.
And these were extraordinarily talented people.

Transcript

Machine transcript in the original language. It may contain errors. Select a timestamp to play that moment.

One of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Scully got a very serious disease.

And that disease, I've seen other people get it too.

It's the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work.

And that if you just tell all these other people, you know, here's this great idea, then of course they can go off and make it happen.

And the problem with that is that there's just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship

in between a great idea and a great product.

And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows.

It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the

subtleties of it.

And you also find there's tremendous trade-offs that you have to make.

I mean, you know, there are just certain things you can't make electrons do.

There are certain things you can't make plastic do or glass do or factories do or

robots do.

And as you get into all these things, designing a product is keeping 5,000 things in your

brain, these concepts, and fitting them all together and kind of continuing to push

to fit them together in new and different ways to get what you want.

And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity

to fit these things together a little differently.

And it's that process that is the magic.

And so we had a lot of great ideas when we started, but what I've always felt that

a team of people doing something they really believe in is like when I was a young kid,

There was a widowed man that lived up the street.

And he was in his 80s.

He's a little scary looking.

And I got to know him a little bit.

I think he might have paid me to mow his lawn or something.

And one day he said, come on into my garage.

I want to show you something.

And he pulled out this dusty old rock tumbler.

It was a motor and a coffee can and a little band between them.

And he said, come on with me.

We went out to the back and we got some just some rocks some regular old ugly rocks

and we put them in the can with a little bit of

liquid and a little bit of

grit powder and

We closed the can up and he turned this motor on he said come back tomorrow

And his can was making a you know racket as the stones were

And I came back the next day

And we took we opened the can

and we took out these amazingly beautiful polished rocks.

The same common stones that had gone in

through rubbing against each other like this,

creating a little bit of friction,

creating a little bit of noise,

had come out these beautiful polished rocks.

And that's always been in my mind my metaphor

for a team working really hard on something

they're passionate about is that it's through

a team through that group of incredibly talented people

bumping up against each other, having arguments,

having fights sometimes, making some noise,

and working together, they polish each other,

and they polish the ideas, and what comes out

are these really beautiful stones.

So it's hard to explain,

and it's certainly not the result of one person.

I mean, people like symbols, so I'm the symbol

certain things, but it really was a team effort on the Mac.

Now, in my life, I observed something fairly early on at Apple, which I didn't know how

to explain it then, but I've thought a lot about it since.

Most things in life, the dynamic range between average and the best is at most two to one.

If you go to New York City and you get an average taxi cab driver versus the best taxi cab driver,

you're probably going to get to your destination with the best taxi cab maybe 30% faster.

In an automobile, what's the difference between an average and the best?

Maybe 20%?

The best CD player and an average CD player?

I don't know, 20%?

So 2 to 1 is a big, big dynamic range in most of life.

In software, and it used to be the case in hardware too, the difference between average and the best is 50 to 1, maybe 100 to 1.

Easy.

Okay?

Very few things in life are like this, but what I was lucky enough to spend my life in is like this.

And so I've built...

a lot of my success off finding these truly gifted people and not settling for B and

C players, but really going for the A players.

And I found something.

I found that when you get enough A players together, when you go through the incredible

work to find five of these A players, they really like working with each other because

they've never had a chance to do that before.

And they don't want to work with B and C players, and so it becomes self-policing.

And they only want to hire more A players.

And so you build up these pockets of A players, and it propagates.

And that's what the Mac team was like.

They were all A players.

And these were extraordinarily talented people.